Everything's Not Lost
by loves.possibility
Summary: A one-shot. Bella drags Alice to a bar to drink away her post-breakup woes. AU. AH. Rated T for some language/violence.


**This is my very fist attempt at actually writing anything for fan fiction. I haven't even filled out my profile yet! No matter, here is my (not so) masterful (possibly disastrous) first attempt at writing a story.**

**The Dedication: To my best friend - she knows who she is. But for everyone else: To edwardlovesme. She's the one who pressured me to actually write something, and unless I desperately fall in love with writing, I'm going to retreat to my reading pursuits after this daring jaunt.**

**Disclaimer: I own none of the brilliant Twilight universe created by Stephenie Meyer; I do however admit to being jealous of her genius. **

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I sat at the bar, feeling the stained fabric beneath me creak slightly as I shifted on my stool, staring idly off into space while tracing the waves of the dark, wood countertop. Music pumped through the bar's speakers, and the people sitting at the scattered tables behind me nursed their drinks. A head appeared in what had just been empty space, and bronze filled my vision.

The head seemed to tower over the spiky, black-haired head of the person to my left. The difference in height would have been comical, had I been in a more jovial mood, and had my neighbor not been my best friend, Alice Brandon.

Alice turned to the bartender standing nearby, not quite ready to order. She wasn't looking at him, but was instead gazing at the list of specials on the wall. I nudged her quickly, and she swiftly turned toward the bartender with a dazzling, half-hearted smile planted on her face. The cheap lights bounced off the colored bottles on the walls, and cast green and blue ghosts onto her already pale face; his grin faltered for a second before snapping back into place. In the sickly lights she scary, but was also undeniably and inhumanly beautiful.

I couldn't really blame the bartender for the glazed expression that overtook his face. I'm sure my face looked exactly the same when I first met Alice, my roommate at Seattle University. Of course, she was much too nice to tell me that.

I sighed and turned to the bartender. He was attractive, for sure – honey blond hair, deep blue eyes – but tonight wasn't one for failing practical lessons in flirting.

"I'll have a gin and tonic," I told him brusquely, and turned to Alice expectantly.

"Vodka," was all she said, still not quite looking the star struck bartender in the eye, focusing instead somewhere behind him. She was here to drink away her post-breakup woes – the last of them, hopefully. Her boyfriend of nearly a year broke up with her two weeks ago, the asshole.

I hadn't particularly liked the creep. He was normal enough, physically attractive in all but the face. His eyes were really all I could ever remember about his face. They were a piercing blue, but were also cunning, sharp, and had a predatory glint that I didn't trust. I did try to tell Alice that he just wasn't right in the head, but she brushed me off, saying that he was just protective.

_Protective, my ass_, I thought. He was unstable.

Before him – before James – Alice dated, but she had hardly ever committed to a long-term relationship. She was waiting for "her soul mate."

She had these dreams sometimes, dreams that came true. Sometimes they were about little things, like a sale in a store we _didn't_ get mail from, or big things, like her father's suicide. (A letter was forwarded to her, informing her of her father's death two days after her dream.) She had a dream about meeting her blue-eyed soul mate in the very bar that we were now in. In the dream she had been sitting on one of the stools, and turned to see a pair of sapphire eyes, and had woken up just as she was about to learn his name. The vision ended while someone was yelling to him, "Ja-!"

So here we came about nine months ago. And she met James.

Alice had her whole life mapped out: from her fashion design classes at Seattle U, to the colors for her wedding (blue mocha), to the layout of her first boutique in New York. So after months, when James dumped her, after cheating on her with some red-haired slut from the floor below us, she was devastated; she had always been able to trust her visions before.

She wasn't really wallowing in post-breakup misery. She lost faith in her dreams, her visions, and was slowly losing faith in herself. So I dragged her back to this bar to hopefully prove her wrong about herself.

I opened my mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, feeling my face flush from the awkwardness of the silence. I was just about to speak, but was interrupted by the blond bartender with our drinks.

"Here are y'all's drinks," he said, with a notable southern accent.

"Thanks," I told him.

I watched to Alice mutter a quiet thank you to her feet, and begun to glare at her drink, her eyes clearly warning me, _Leave me alone or go home. _I sighed before turning back to my own drink.

As Alice finished her drink, I scanned the room for the bartender, who seemed to be missing, so that I could order us more drinks. A man started yelling, and I turned. I heard the sound of glass splintering right below me, and flinched as a few drops of beer landed on my arm.

The blond bartender was two feet in front of me, with splintered glass and a puddle of alcohol at his feet. The man at the table nearest to us was standing; his face was red, and his arm was raised, as if he had just chucked his bottle of beer at someone. The red-faced man took a shaky step toward the bartender, flanked by two russet-skinned men.

Another bartender came out from behind the bar to stand beside the blond one. He was taller than the blond, over six feet tall, and had a mop of brown curls that seemed out of place with his hulking physique.

The bar grew quiet as all chatter ceased, and only the rhythmic pumping of the bass filled the silence. I saw the bronze haired man next to Alice rise and go stand with the two bartenders, facing the three drunken men.

He was beautiful. Not that the other two men _weren't_ beautiful too, but they were just average compared to him. The sleeves of his dark button-down were rolled up revealing muscular forearms. His hair was a perfectly tousled mess atop his head, in that wonderful shade of bronze. His eyes sparkled like emeralds, lighting up his pale face; his face was tensed, hardening and accentuating his perfect features.

The red-faced man lurched forward, and the two dark-eyed, russet-skinned men behind him stepped forward with him, and each of them grabbed one of his arms.

"You don't want to do this, Jacob," said the shorter of the two.

"The hell I don't, Quil," he growled as a reply, and the flanking men gripped Jacob's arms tighter.

The tension in the air was nearly visible. The eight feet between the two groups seemed to be fused with electricity, crackling and sparking.

Suddenly, the one called Jacob lunged toward the two bartenders and the beautiful bronze-haired man, breaking free of his friends' restraining hands with a loud cry. He pulled his arm back as he raced towards the bronze-haired one, who was closest to him. Jacob snapped his fist forward, and it collided with a _thud_ against the green-eyed god's face. My stomach quivered precariously as I watched blood begin to stream from his nose.

The burly man stepped forward and grabbed Jacob by his still outstretched arm. He twisted it around, and I winced as Jacob howled in pain. The burly man gave him a solid whack on the back of his head, and Jacob dropped to the floor.

The blond bartender smirked, "You think you might have overdone that a bit, Emmett?" before spinning around to face Quil and Jacob's other friend himself.

"Embry, you take Blondie," said Quil with a grin, "I call the bear."

I sighed. I had _thought_ that Quil and Embry were the reasonable ones – I had thought that there wouldn't be a fight after Jacob was knocked out. _I guess I was wrong._

Embry lunged for the blond bartender at the same time that Quil lunged at Emmett. Emmett raised his arms, and his face became a mocking mask as he grinned. The blond bartender just put up his fists with a grim expression, as if he had fought one too many fights.

I looked to the floor at the bloody green-eyed man. He was using a stool to support himself as climbed unsteadily to his feet, swaying slightly.

I wanted to go help and take care of him, irrational as that sounds, considering I didn't even know his name. My feet were just about to obey my thoughts, but then I was distracted again by sounds of the four men fighting.

The brawl erupted in a matter of seconds, and I thought would be over just as quickly, until I heard the sound of glass shattering. Embry had grabbed a bottle from the nearest table and smashed it over the head of the blond bartender. The bronze-haired man's eyes widened as he softly cried, "Jasper!"

Alice's head whipped around in the blink of an eye. It was the first time she had really made any non-lethargic movements during the whole evening. Time seemed to stand still as her hazel eyes connected to Jasper's blue ones.

"Jasper," Alice whispered quietly to herself before her mouth stretched into a large grin, "You've kept me waiting a long time."


End file.
